Order, order

European Emissions Trading Scheme Motion

The house recognises:

• That the EU ETS has not substantially reduced emissions.

• That the CDC Climate Research has found that^1: “Using an econometric analysis based on a business-as-usual scenario, it is shown that reductions of around 1.1 GtCO2 are likely to have been achieved within the scope of the 11.000 installations covered by the EU ETS. Of those reductions, between 600 and 700 million tonnes are said to have resulted from the two policies in the 2020 Climate & Energy Package, which aims to achieve a 20% renewable energy target (a decrease of around 500 million tonnes) and a 20% improvement in energy intensity (a decrease of between 100 and 200 million tonnes). The economic downturn also played a significant, although not dominant role in the decrease in CO2 emissions, the impact of which was estimated at 300 million tonnes.”

• Notes that this leaves at most 200 million tons of reductions from the EU ETS itself, and at the least only 100, a relatively lacking amount. That indeed the vast majority of reductions had nothing to do with the EU ETS despite claims to the contrary.

• That this house notes that the EU ETS has been used to undermine other climate and emissions control policies.

• That the EU's Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive was modified to explicitly exclude CO2 emission limits for the “installations” (power stations and industrial plants) which are covered by the EU ETS due to worries that increases in efficiency produced could lower carbon prices^2.

• That leaked UK Government documents show that the Government sought to weaken energy efficiency measures and renewable energy targets on the grounds that these could collapse the carbon price^3.

• That this house notes that the EU ETS has essentially subsidised polluters at the taxpayers’ expense.

• That the EU ETS has consistently seen businesses pass on carbon “costs” to consumers that in reality were never incurred in the first place and that a handful of large companies have gained tens of billions of euros in unearned profits this way^4.

The house urges:

• That the Government seeks to replace the EU ETS with a scheme in accordance with the Contraction and Convergence framework suggested by the Global Commons Institute and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Various sources supporting the C&C framework can be found here^5.

Sources: 1 http://www.cdcclimat.com/IMG/pdf/13-10_cdc_climat_r_wp_13-15_assessing_the_factors_behing_co2_emissions_changes.pdf

2 http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/technical_report_2008_3

3 http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/08/13/RenewablesTargetDocument.pdf

4 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.283/abstract

5 http://www.gci.org.uk/SDa.html

This motion was written by /u/NicolasBroaddus, on behalf of the 9th Official Opposition.

This reading will end on the 15th of April.